In the 70s, Richard Bandler, mathematician, psychologist, and computer scientist, and John Grinder, linguist, studied three great successful therapists of their time: the creator of Gestalt therapy, Fritz Perls, the mother of family therapy, Virginia Satir and hypnotherapist Milton Erikson.

According to Bandler and Grinder, " by modeling excellent people in their field, NLP has managed to systematize effective patterns to make them available to us. Its purpose is to be useful and practical, as it helps us develop resources and draw effective strategies to achieve what we set out in life."

Photo by Frank Vessia on Unsplash

10 NLP exercises you can practice.

  • Modeling emotions:

Faced with the same situation, each of us can think and react differently. If we choose to react differently, we will also think differently. Ex.: How do you react to rain?

Possibility:

  1. How nice that the rain is watering my seedlings!
  2. That's good, that's how I get rid of running!
  3. What a shame because football with friends is canceled!
  4. Oh, my perfect hairstyle is going to spoil!
  5. What a horror the jam that is going to form!
  6. That's good because that's how I can get my new raincoat!
  7. I hate rain GR Grrrr....and I'm sure I'll catch a cold!
  8. I love getting wet and the smell of wet.
Of all these options, which one or which would you choose?. What Have you learned from this exercise?.

  • Transforming the negative into the positive through the visual:

Let's use the power of images to train our mind in positive: make a big, colorful picture of something that goes wrong, and down a small picture

and opaque about how you want it to work out for you. Now make the small picture grow, fill with color, and tape the large one.

  • Change focus for different results: focus on what you want to achieve:

Think about what you want to achieve, not what you want to avoid.

  • The movie of your life:

We are going to propose that you act as if you were going to make the best film of your life and that you visualize it in the most beautiful way that you would like it to be.

To do this, draw a straight line. This will be your own line.

Then think of beautiful things that you have lived and take a picture of each of them, then invent what beautiful you want to live in 1, 3, and 5 years.

The next step is for you to choose how you are going to imagine flying over your own line, the one you have already drawn. Balloon, plane, helicopter...?. It can also be a magic carpet, an airship, it can really be what you can think of, of course, it has to be something in which you feel safe. It is very important that you feel confident in what you choose and, besides, that you get on or off the flight so that you always feel beautiful things.

  • Patterns of change:

Do this exercise with a partner. Have your partner identify a negative state of” jamming “or” blocking " and fully connect with him, looking out through his eyes, remembering how he feels, doing what he was doing. Note your physiology. Bring your attention back to the here and now.

Now have your partner identify a positive state from another time and that can be a good appropriate alternative to the stuck State. Fully connect it with this state. Note your physiology. Bring your attention back to the here and now (step 1).

Reconnect him with the negative state and, when he is living it fully, he begins to gently change his physiology so that it resembles as much as possible that of the positive state (Step 2). As you change your state, you should start to feel different. If not, repeat Step 2 and check for more subtle changes by applying them as well.

Leave a space of time (during this time you can exchange papers and repeat the exercise).

Do the check now: ask your partner to get back into the stuck negative state and the exact physiology of Step 1. Ask him to check if it is different. If it is different how is it different?. Ask him to describe it as best as possible.

  • Perspective patterns (basic Visual pattern):

  1. Make a picture of something that makes you feel bad looking at it.
  2. Move the image away and bring your attention back to the here and now. We will use the image later. 3. Now identify four positive images.
  3. Make them large and merge them into a collage.
  4. Hold this compound positive and place the negative in the center. Now notice the change in your immediate response to the negative.
  5. What can you learn from him that you couldn't before? Eye: if you place the negative image in front of the positive ones, you will be creating a background figure pattern that will highlight the negative and this can make you feel worse. Some people do this naturally.
  6. The solution to this is relatively simple: to pass the negative behind the positive. The key is to see the negative in perspective and to see the positive in the foreground.

  • Planning troubleshooting I:

In this exercise, it is important to stay within the different frameworks as far as possible. After the exercise, it is interesting to compare the different frames and how you felt when switching between them. Sometimes it can be difficult to distinguish any of them. Often it is the framing of " how will it be fixed?" which is more difficult. This happens because

sometimes we jump too fast from the " why?" a" what can I do about it?”. Taking the time to think about “how” it can be fixed is great for creating options and selecting a more effective plan as to "what" to do.
    • Step 1: Identify a problem. Is there a real problem?.
    • Step 2: What's the problem?.
    • Step 3: How is the problem?.
    • Step 4. Why is it a problem?.
    • Step 5. Why fix it?.
    • Step 6. How to fix it?.
    • Step 7. What will be fixed?.
Do this exercise by changing places in the room and putting papers on the floor. Geography will help you get out of the deadlock and move the body and mind.

  • Planning troubleshooting II:

Put five folios DIN a 4 on the floor: the two papers below are fear and anxiety. The two roles above are development and security. We start in the middle by putting a paper to describe the neutral state.

Now we identify a matter. A good example to practice would be to choose something that you started and about which you then gave up and ended up leaving. For example: "I am bored in my job and I would like to find another one, but I am afraid to send CVs because they could reject me in an interview."

In this exercise what we have to do is walk in sequence through the places that fit the feeling. So " bored with work "is" anguish";" I wish I had another "is" development "and" I could be rejected "is"fear". At this point, the person surrenders and leaves because the feeling of anticipated rejection becomes too strong.

Now repeat the exercise, this time returning to the beginning to remind you of the initial feeling using the word "but": "I'm bored at my job, but I would like to have another, but they could refuse me in an interview."

Repeat the exercise one more time and, this time, move to any of the unused areas still using the phrase "so". In this example, the practitioner would add security " I'm bored in

my job, so I would like to have another one, so I'm afraid to look for another one because they might reject me in the interview, so I need to be safe in the interview."

Continue to use each of the four areas to explore all possible issues that might arise, building an action plan based on using your ability to identify concerns and how to use them, rather than allowing feelings to stop you from moving forward: "so I need to be safe in the interview. What can I do to make it safer? (development); it might also be boring the new work (distress), what can I do to make it more interesting? (development).

  • Perceptive positions for conflict resolution:

This exercise is done in pairs. We make 3 circles on the ground. We start in perceptual position 1: we see, feel, Live and describe the situation as we live, feel and value it.

We follow the exercise by moving to the 2 perceptual positions: we move to the 2 circles and get into each other's skin. We live the experience as if we were that other person, living it not only on an intellectual level, but walking as that person would.

We follow the exercise by moving to the perceptual position 3, to circle 3. Here we distance ourselves from the situation and see it from the outside, as if we were someone neutral, putting the emotions aside. The 3rd position helps us to take distance from things and to be able to regain objectivity. What does this person see happening in this situation?. Do not take sides in any of them, do not judge or value, just expose the facts that you see from afar. What advice would you give to each party?.

Return to the first position: What Have you learned?. What are you gonna do differently from now on?.

  • The remote control:

Relive a situation that has caused you discomfort or has been unpleasant lately. Look at the colors, the temperature, what you hear, what you smell.

Now imagine that you have a magic remote control that allows you to increase the volume, change the light, the color, etc. start by changing to your liking everything that in the visual record bothers you. Now keep changing to your liking everything that in the auditory register bothers you. Finally change to your liking everything that in the kinesthetic register bothers you. You can play with your remote by adding what you like and removing what you dislike until you are comfortable with the situation.

What has changed? What Have you learned?.

Once you have read the article, do you encourage the performance of these exercises?. Do you think they can help you in your learning?. We hope you encourage yourself to start this mental training so that you develop your own potential.